Pop 'EM Drop 'EM SameGame is a new puzzle game just announced by Hudson where players match two or more colored blocks to clear them. As blocks are cleared, the remaining blocks will shift. If enough blocks are cleared bonus points are awarded when the player clears the screen. The game allows for play with up to four friends at home in three fast-paced multiplayer modes: Fame Game, Shame Game and Blame Game. Players can also customize the game by changing the block design and backgrounds.
All in all, Pop 'Em Drop 'Em SameGame offers a fairly robust and attractive array of options for a WiiWare puzzler. Its price is also right -- at just 500 Wii Points, this is a package that puzzle players should definitely consider as a compliment to the Tetris Party and Dr. Mario Online Rx already in place on their Wii's channel array. It probably won't get as much play as those two, and doesn't offer quite as much nostalgic value even with the similar age of its earliest editions. But for five bucks, you can't really go wrong with it -- it's certainly a game that's too good to just be brushed past and forgotten, like some of those other WiiWare puzzlers from this past year.
Presentation - 8.0
Graphics - 8.0
Sound - 7.0
Gameplay - 7.5
Lasting Appeal - 7.0
Overall -
Nintendo starts off the week with a few new WiiWare and Virtual Console games. The Wii-kly releases have been announced. Watch for them on the Wii Shop today from Nintendo (available beginning 9am PST):
WiiWare Release:
Pop'Em Drop'Em SAMEGAME (Hudson Entertainment, 1-4 players, Rated E for Everyone, 500 Wii Points)
Virtual Console Releases:
Bomberman®'94 (TurboGrafx16, 1-5 players, Rated E for Everyone-Comic Mischief, 700 Wii Points)
DETANA TWIN BEE (TurboGrafx16, 1-2 players, Rated E for Everyone-Mild Cartoon Violence, 700 Wii Points)
An extract from the Pop Them, Drop Them SameGame review by WiiWare World:
"SameGame is a bit of an unusual one. It was first created way back in 1985, but was never really all that popular. Nevertheless, it went on to spawn a large number of clones and remakes over the years, with Hudson's effort being the latest.
The basic concept of SameGame is quite simple. You are presented with a large grid filled with blocks of varying colours. Your job is to eliminate every single one of these blocks by matching them up with other blocks of the same colour. The catch is that you can't actually move any blocks yourself, the only way to move them is by selecting an already existing group of similarly coloured blocks and making them disappear, dropping all blocks above down a number of spaces. The larger a group is when you make it vanish, the more points you get.
As you can imagine clearing the whole screen is quite a task, it's very easy to be left with just one block of a certain colour, meaning there's no way to make it disappear, because the minimum amount of blocks you need to destroy a group is two. When you're left with no more possible moves, you instantly lose. If you clear everything the game doesn't end, the screen will be completely refilled. This, of course, goes on until you fail to clear a screen."
